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French Senator Blasts Dalai Lama and Anti-China Hate Campaign

April 11, 2008 (LPAC)--In a noted TV intervention and on his blog, French socialist senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon blasted the Dalai Lama and the anti-China hate campaign. Noting that if a boycott had to be organized against Beijing it should have been done before attributing the Olympic Games to China, he notes that most demonstrators know neither the name of the President not the name of the Prime Minister of China. In a clear reference to the British, Mélenchon writes on his blog that "in a more general fashion, when I see all of this, I hear the echo of contempt of colonialists which --weapons in hand-- imposed during their times the obligation on the Chinese to engage in the opium trade! ... The events in Tibet are a pretext. A pretext constructed for a public conditioned by the repetition of images supposed to create proof rather then reflection." He then blasts neo-con agent provocateur Robert Menard of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) as a person "defending human rights using variable geometry." "Did he ever conducted an action, even symbolical, when the US legalized torture? Did he ever do anything to get a lawyer for the prisoners of Guantanamo?"

He then gives some of the hard facts on Tiben, which has been Chinese since the fourteenth century. Lhassa has been under Chinese and Manchu authority way before [his home region] France Conté was under the authority of the French kings. The Chinese regime abolished serfdom, the same serfdom that the Dalai Lama stands for. Before the so-called Chinese "invasion" less then 2% of children went to school while today its 81%. Life expectancy went from 35.5 years to 67 years and overall population nearly doubled since 1959.